“You’ve been drawing breath for the last two hours strictly on Games Federation say-so. I did it. And I’m the one that finally shoved through the authorization for the deal I’m going to offer you. There was strong opposition from the old guard-this kind of thing has never been done-but I’m going through with it.
“You asked me who you could kill if you could go all the way to the top with a machine gun. One of them would have been me. Richards. Does that surprise you?”
“I suppose it does. I had you pegged for the house nigger.”
Killian threw back his head and laughed, but the laughter sounded forced-the laughter of a man playing for high stakes and laboring under a great tension.
“Here’s the deal, Richards. Fly your plane to Harding. There will be a Games limo waiting at the airport. An execution will be performed-a fake. Then you join our team. ”
There was a startled yelp of rage from McCone. “You black bastard-”
Amelia Williams looked stunned.
“Very good,” Richards said. “I knew you were good, but this is really great. What a fine used-car salesman you would have made, Killian.”
“Did McCone sound like I was lying?”
“McCone is a fine actor. He did a little song and dance at the airport that could have won an Academy Award.” Still, he was troubled. McCone’s hustling away of Amelia for coffee when it appeared she might trip the Irish, McCone’s steady, heavy antagonism-they didn’t fit. Or did they? His mind began to pinwheel. “Maybe you’re springing this on him without his knowledge. Counting on his reaction to make it look even better. ”
Killian said: “You’ve done your song and dance with the plastic explosive, Mr.
Richards. We know-know-that you are bluffing. But there is a button on this desk, a small red button, which is not a bluff. Twenty seconds after I push it, that plane will be torn apart by surface-to-air Diamondback missiles carrying clean nuclear warheads. ”
“The Irish isn’t fake, either. ” But there was a curdled taste in his mouth. The bluff was soured.
“Oh, it is. You couldn’t get on a Lockheed G-A plane with a plastic explosive. Not without tripping the alarms. There are four separate detectors on the plane, installed to foil hijackers. A fifth was installed in the parachute you asked for. I can tell you that the alarm lights in the Voigt Field control tower were watched with great interest and trepidation when you got on. The consensus was that you probably had the Irish. You have proved so resourceful all the way up the line that it seemed like a fair assumption to make. There was more than a little relief when none of those lights went on. I assume you 443
never had the opportunity to pick any up. Maybe you never thought of it until too late.
Well, doesn’t matter. It makes your position worse, but-”
McCone was suddenly standing beside Richards. “Here it goes,” he said, grinning.
“Here is where I blow your fucking head off, donkey. ” He pointed his gun at Richards’s temple.
Minus 016 and COUNTING
“You’re dead if you do, ” Killian said.
McCone hesitated, fell back a step, and stared at the Free-Vee unbelievingly. His face began to twist and crumple again. His lips writhed in a silent effort to gain speech. When it finally came, it was a whisper of thwarted rage.
“I can take him! Right now! Right here! We’ll all be safe! We’ll-”
Wearily, Killian said: “You’re safe now, you God damned fool. And Donahue could have taken him-if we wanted him taken.”
“This man is a criminal!” McCone’s voice was rising. “He’s killed police officers!
Committed acts of anarchy and air piracy! He’s . . . he’s publicly humiliated me and my department!”
“Sit down,” Killian said, and his voice was as cold as the deep space between planets.
“It’s time you remembered who pays your salary, Mr. Chief Hunter.”
“I’m going to the Council President with this! ” McCone was raving now. Spittle flew from his lips. “You’re going to be chopping cotton when this is over, nig! You goddam worthless night-fighting sonofabitch-”
“Please throw your gun on the floor,” a new voice said. Richards looked around, startled. It was Donahue, the navigator, looking colder and deadlier than ever. His greased hair gleamed in the cabin’s indirect lighting. He was holding a wire-stock Magnum/Springstun machine pistol, and it was trained on McCone. “Robert S. Donahue, old-timer. Games Council Control. Throw it on the floor.”
Minus 015 and COUNTING
McCone looked at him for a long second, and then the gun thumped on the heavy pile of the carpet. “You-”
“I think we’ve heard all the rhetoric we need,” Donahue said. “Go back into second class and sit down like a good boy.”
McCone backed up several paces, snarling futilely. He looked to Richards like a vampire in an old horror movie that had been thwarted by a cross.
When he was gone, Donahue threw Richards a sardonic little salute with the barrel of his gun and smiled. “He won’t bother you again.”
“You still look like a queer-stomper,” Richards said evenly.
444
The small smile faded. Donahue stared at him with sudden, empty dislike for a moment, and then went forward again.
Richards turned back to the Free-Vee screen. He found that his pulse rate had remained perfectly steady. He had no shortness of breath, no rubber legs. Death had become a normality.
“Are you there, Mr. Richards?” Killian asked.
“Yes I am.”
“The problem has been handled?”
“Yes. ”
“Good. Let me get back to what I was saying.”
“Go ahead.”
Killian sighed at his tone. “I was saying that our knowledge of your bluff makes your position worse, but makes our credibility better. Do you see why?”
“Yes,” Richards said detachedly. “It means you could have blown this bird out of the sky anytime. Or you could have had Holloway set the plane down at will. McCone would have bumped me. ”
“Exactly. Do you believe we know you are bluffing?”
“No. But you’re better than McCone. Using your planted houseboy was a fine stroke.
”
Killian laughed. “Oh, Richards. You are such a peach. Such a rare, iridescent bird. ”
And yet again it sounded forced, tense, pressured. It came to Richards that Killian was holding information which he wanted badly not to tell.
“If you really had it, you would have pulled the string when McCone put the gun to your head. You knew he was going to kill you. Yet you sat there. ”
Richards knew it was over, knew that they knew. A smile cracked his features.
Killian would appreciate that. He was a man of a sharp and sardonic turn of mind. Make them pay to see the hole card, then.
“I’m not buying any of this. If you push me, everything goes bang.”
“And you wouldn’t be the man you are if you didn’t spin it out to the very end. Mr.
Donahue?”
“Yes, sir. ” Donahue’s cool, efficient, emotionless voice came over the voicecom and out of the Free-Vee almost simultaneously.
“Please go back and remove Mrs. Williams’s pocketbook from Mr. Richards’s pocket.
You’re not to harm him in any way.”
“Yes, sir. ” Richards was eerily reminded of the plastipunch that had stenciled his original ID card at Games headquarters. Clitter-clitter-clitter.
Donahue reappeared and walked toward Richards. His face was smooth and cold and empty. Programmed. The word leaped into Richards’s mind.
445
“Stand right there, pretty boy,” Richards remarked, shifting the hand in his coat pocket slightly. “The Man there is safe on the ground. You’re the one that’s going to the moon. ”
He thought the steady stride might have faltered for just a second and the eyes seemed to have winced the tiniest uncertain bit, and then he came on again. He might have been promenading on the Cote d’Azur . . . or approaching a gibbering homosexual cowering at the end of a blind alley.
Briefly Richards considered grabbing the parachute and fleeing. Hopeless. Flee?
Where? The men’s bathroom at the far end of the third class was the end of the line.
“See you in hell,” he said softly, and made a pulling gesture in his pocket. This time the reaction was a little better. Donahue made a grunting noise and threw his hands up to protect his face in an instinctive gesture as old as man himself. He lowered them, still in the land of the living looking embarrassed and very angry.
Richards took Amelia Williams’s pocketbook out of his muddy, torn coat pocket and threw it. It struck Donahue’s chest and plopped at his feet like a dead bird. Richards’s hand was slimed with sweat. Lying on his knee again, it looked strange and white and foreign. Donahue picked up the bag, looked in it perfunctorily, and handed it to Amelia.
Richards felt a stupid sort of sadness at its passage. In a way, it was like losing an old friend. “Boom,” he said softly.